Abstract
In this paper we present a semantic analysis of the application of didactic constructivism to chemical education. We show that the psychological basis of constructivism yield, when applied to chemistry, an internalist semantics for the chemical names. Since these names have been presented as typical examples of an externalism for kind terms, a fundamental incompatibility ensues. We study this situation, to conclude that it affects chemical education at every level. Finally, we present a preliminary analysis of this problem from the point of view of physics.
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Notes
In this paper, following Putnam (1975), the word ‘meaning’ is employed to designate the epistemic component of kind terms. Thus, for us ‘meaning’ is the intension of a word, which roughly corresponds to Carnap’s ‘primary meaning’, or to Frege’s ‘Sinn’. In the same way, our use of ‘reference’ is equivalent to ‘extension’, that is, to Carnap’s ‘secondary meaning’, or to Frege’s ‘Bedeutung’.
Of course ‘now’ is not a pertinent time specification, nor ‘Pedro’ conveys enough information if it is not accompanied by some kind of ostension, nor even ‘angry’ would be universally accepted as a psychological state. We have employed them here only for the sake of simplicity. A proper time and individual specification should be equivalent to those used in physical experiments, for example, in astronomy.
We use the term ‘idea’ to express a psychological state related to the learning of a given scientific content. In this very wide sense, to have an idea about something can be to have a mental model of it, or to associate an image to it, or any other possible cognitive counterpart of the content.
In order to simplify the argument, and without any loss of generality, we shall deal in this paper only with pure substances. Therefore, when we use ‘chemical name’ or ‘chemical kind’ we shall be referring to these pure substances.
We think that these aggregates must be thought as ensembles of portions of chemical substances, but they do not have a proper chemical character themselves. Their chemical properties are those of the different chemical substances they are made of; aggregates do not have a chemical singularity on their own. We think that the study of macroscopic aggregates is in a higher level than chemistry, that of rheology or petrology. It could be interesting to study to what extent these higher order levels supervene on chemistry, but this, of course, is not our purpose in this paper.
If we accept the time-honoured, though disputed (a compulsory reference here is Gettier 1963), conception of knowledge as justified true belief), the meaning of sentences such as ‘Pedro knows that the material sample M has the chemical name N’ (or any other statement relevant in the discourse of chemistry) can be given with the following set of necessary and jointly sufficient conditions:
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The chemical proposition P (namely, “M is N”) is true.
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Pedro believes that P is true
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Pedro is justified to believe that P is true.
Provided that P is true and that so believes Pedro, the question is, of course, how Pedro can be justified in his belief. Without getting into the subtleties of the theory of justification, we can rather safely accept that Pedro can be said to be justified if he is able to produce an explanation as to why P is true. Our point is that any viable explanation rests on the formula N, since any chemical statement that we can present in defence of P must consist on either a chemical theoretical argumentation in which N plays a central role, or on an interpretation of an experimental result, which, to be explanatorily relevant must be done in terms of N. For example, a possible proof for P could be to show that the sample M displays a characteristic reactivity. But for this result to be a justification of P, it must be explained in the terms of the theory of chemistry. And in particular this explanation must consist on a reaction mechanism including N.
Thus, the epistemological perfection of chemical nomenclature is the basis of any justification in chemistry.
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But if an externalist chemistry were the only possible constructivism-repellent discipline, it would not diminish the interest of our analysis, though, of course, the focus should be put on a different point. Chemistry would be the semantic, or even epistemological (or even metaphysical!), counterpart of the resilient Gaul village of Asterix, the magic potion perhaps being the idea of essence.
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Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank Prof. Mauricio Suárez, Dr. Iñaki San Pedro and Ms. Fernanda Samaniego for their useful suggestions. The author is a member of the MCISR (Methods of Causal Inference and Scientific Representation) Complutense Research Group (GR35/10-A-930370). This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología Project No FFI-2011-29834-C03-01.
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Sánchez Gómez, P.J. The semantics of chemical education: constructivism, externalism and the language of chemistry. Found Chem 15, 103–116 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10698-011-9130-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10698-011-9130-0